Justice: the Senate wants to protect the opinions given by corporate lawyers

A first step has just been taken for the justice bills. These texts, which provide for a strengthening of human and financial resources in order to halve the time taken for justice by 2027, were widely adopted on Tuesday by the Senate with a majority on the right and the center. Among the changes made, the business community will retain the one concerning the opinions of in-house lawyers, a subject discussed for years.

The president of the Union centriste group, Hervé Marseille, tabled an amendment supported by the Chancellery which aims to allow lawyers employed in groups to give legal advice and to draft deeds under private signature. This confidentiality of opinions is accompanied by safeguards: it is conditional on a diploma and training in ethics and excludes criminal and tax matters.

Economic and commercial strategy

“Compliance obligations (climate, human and social rights, ethics and governance) permeate every business decision and profoundly transform, in a context of judicialization of economic life, the role of corporate lawyers”, explains the amendment. . “As the law is now at the heart of economic and commercial strategy, they have a primary duty to advise their employer on the prevention of these risks in France and throughout the world. »

Concretely, the senators want to prevent these obligations from generating “a risk of self-incrimination”. Joining the analysis resulting from the Estates General of Justice, they wanted to ensure that these internal opinions cannot be used to incriminate French companies, in particular abroad where competing groups are often protected. It is the argument of competitiveness that has been put forward.

Financial crime

Another important change concerns the duration of the preliminary investigation, which particularly affects economic and financial crime. The government itself brought an amendment to modify the framework it had set in December 2021 and which limited the duration of the investigation to two years, with an option of an additional year at the request of the prosecutor.

From now on, if the text is also adopted in the National embly, the starting point of the deadline will be the first search or the hearing, which should give a real breath of fresh air to the prosecution, knowing that it sometimes takes more a year of analysis before launching a search, for example in public procurement cases.

“This text will allow the magistrates of the prosecution to decide, exceptionally, on the continuation of the most complex investigations for a new period of two years, provided that these take place according to reinforced contradictory methods”, details in a press release. the National Conference of State Prosecutors, which welcomes this change. Jean-François Bohnert, from the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office, had himself warned of the risk of having to sort through surveys preliminary at the end of this year.

Phone data

The senators also adopted an amendment allowing the prosecutor to propose a new sentence in the event of refusal to approve a first appearance on prior admission of guilt ( ” to plead guilty “ ), which was not possible until now. For the record, this procedure created in 2004 allows the public prosecutor to propose to a person who acknowledges having committed an offence, a sentence which, if the person concerned agrees, may be approved by the president of the court.

Still on the aspect of criminal procedure, the senators debated a lot about the capture of telephone data remotely. An amendment by the president of the LR group, Bruno Retailleau, was adopted against the advice of the government. It limits the activation of devices for geolocation purposes to offenses punishable by at least ten years’ imprisonment, whereas the text provided for five years.

This Wednesday, the text arrives in the Law Commission of the National embly.